“Then that’s why people don’t like having babies,” said Louis, with the air of having solved a long-standing problem. “I have so often wondered why M. de Larny—my uncle in Paris, you know—was so very angry when Mademoiselle Claire, his sister, had one. He talked about it a lot, and said it was a disgrace, and sent it away, I think.”
“That is nonsense,” said Gilbert loftily, “because only married people have babies.”
“It’s not nonsense,” retorted Louis earnestly. “It’s quite true. Mademoiselle de Larny cried, and my aunt too. I remember it quite well.” Indeed the reminiscences with which the Vicomte, occasionally and quite innocently, regaled the family dinner-table had sometimes to be checked in mid-career. That tendency afforded the Marquise deep cause for thankfulness at her husband’s act in removing him from his Parisian surroundings.
“You can’t remember what’s impossible,” said Gilbert with decision. “You made a mistake—or else you’re inventing. You were only a little boy then.”
“I was not a little boy!” retorted Louis, flushing. “It was only last year. I shall ask my aunt.” He went off whistling, tried to induce one of the men to lend him a flail, and then returned to his cousin to announce confidentially that he intended to teach the baby to ride a bullock.
It was fortunate for the Comtesse d’Aucourt that her daughter was as yet too young really to run any risk of undergoing this instruction. Louis found to his annoyance that a child of two years old is scarcely steady enough on its legs to be a reliable playmate, and is, moreover, never to be met without a nurse in attendance. Yet for a time Mademoiselle Lucienne was as interesting as a new kitten, and he smiled on her even when she plunged tenacious hands into his curls. Since, after all, she cried very little, he was once more reduced to speculation as to the grounds on which the possession of so pleasing a toy could ever be deprecated. Having no fear of strangers he applied to Madame d’Aucourt for enlightenment, but she referred him to the Marquise, and Madame de Château-Foix put him off with that annoying evasion that he would “know when he was older.” Louis then tried to pin down his aunt to a statement of the epoch when he should be considered to have attained the desired longevity—next year, when he would be nine?—the year after, then? He failed in his attempt, but not until the Marquise had been driven nearly desperate in her efforts to elude him.
The Comtesse d’Aucourt, lady-in-waiting to the Princess Adelaide, the new King’s aunt, had been a friend of Madame de Château-Foix since convent days. If she were able to leave her post at Court she paid the Marquise a visit every year. It was by her that intimate news of Versailles came to the Château, and she had this year a budget of more interest than usual—all the particulars of the old King’s death in May. The two boys, quick to realise that she came from a world other than theirs, would demand to be told again how the beautiful Austrian Dauphine looked now that she was Queen of France, or how M. d’Aucourt, at present away as envoy at one of the smaller German courts, had escaped from the Indians when as a young man he fought in Canada with Vaudreuil and Montcalm. The Comtesse became in some sort installed as a story-teller to them, in the September evenings, round the fire, with Louis cross-legged on the floor and Gilbert leaning against his mother’s chair; or under the mulberry tree in the afternoon, when Louis would be flat on the grass at her feet, his own kicking occasionally in the air and his lips black with mulberries. The faint, rather wearied air that always clung to her, the little gestures of her beautiful hands, her clear, delicate enunciation with its undertone of fatigue, remained for years with Gilbert as a kind of embodiment of a life that seemed so far away and at times so attractive.
Then the Comtesse left, and it was winter, with fresh delights; when the execrable, lane-like roads of Vendée were impassable, and with the coming of the snow one could play, with much semblance of reality, at being besieged. Then the days began to get longer, and the birds sang again, and it would soon be summer once more, the best time of all. And the days were like the year: the morning, when one did one’s lessons, was the Spring, because, though it was pleasant, there were more agreeable things to come; and those things happened in Summer, which was the afternoon; and the evening was the Autumn, because, though warded off with stories, bed-time was approaching; and bed, which meant night, was Winter. And the morning was Spring again. . . . But who can compile the almanac of a happy childhood? Day followed day, week fled after week; where the fields had been crowned with rippling yellow they stood shorn, were brown to the ploughshare, were white with frost, were green again with young life. Then, suddenly as it seemed, it all came to an end, for Gilbert was sixteen, and it was high time for him to begin the military education usual to his age and rank.
Though a dreamy boy, he had grown up not unconscious of his own claims upon the world or of his position as one who would some day exact obedience. With powers of thought developed beyond his years, he had not so much the making of a scholar as of a student and lover of men. Under a heaviness which might almost have been mistaken for sullenness of disposition, there lurked possibilities of imagination and of power which none but M. des Graves guessed, and he kept his own counsel. But those who had eyes to see might have noticed that Gilbert received severer censure for any show of idleness in his studies than ever did Louis for a similar (and infinitely more frequent) offence. The priest was very thoughtful on the day that the marquis told him how few weeks more were left to him of his elder pupil, although he had always known of the career for which Gilbert was destined.
Gilbert, as well as M. des Graves, had long been aware that he was going to the military academy at Versailles. Of another arrangement he was still ignorant. His parents had already selected his future wife in the person of the little girl, now aged seven, with whom he had sometimes played. The match had made itself. The Marquis had always an affection for Lucienne, and the now widowed Madame d’Aucourt desired a closer union with the family of her old friend. The nine years’ difference between the ages of the prospective bride and bridegroom was approved, and Lucienne’s dowry, as an only child, was satisfactory. Gilbert received the news with equanimity; the day when he should marry seemed very far off, obscured behind the peaks of the new life upon which he was entering. For the rest, he was fond of the child.